January 17, 2014

There are over 200 species of Moray eels. Worldwide, not one of them had been successfully bred until recently. At Zoo Vienna Schönbrunn in Austria, a Black Ribbon Moray laid a clutch of fertilized eggs. This fact alone is quite a sensation. But it gets better: some larvae even hatched!

"It is the first time that the hatching of Morays could be observed. Up to now, nobody knew what the larvae look like, what they eat and how they behave“, explains the zoo’s director Dagmar Schratter.

The breeding of Morays is completely new territory. The successful event in Schönbrunn Zoo supplies the first information - completely unknown up to now - about the development of their eggs and larvae.

Moray parents: sexually mature females are yellow, the males black or blue. They live in the the coral reefs of the Indo Pacific. Photo credits: Schönbrunn Zoo / Daniel Zupanc

"The heartbeat of the Moray larvae was clearly visible in the transparent egg. At the time of hatching, the larvae are only about one centimeter long and look like little deep-sea monsters with their long teeth," says Anton Weissenbacher, head of the Aquarium House. The animal keepers succeeded in offering the larvae adequate food and shortly after hatching they already started to eat.

The breeding facility was not adapted to the special needs of the Moray larvae, because there was no knowledge based on experience to fall back on. The larvae could be kept alive for one week and the development of the creatures was closely watched and documented. According to the zoo, these first steps promise great hope for the future breeding and study of these creatures.

Weissenbacher says, "We have been able to learn a great deal in this short time and are now adapting the facility accordingly. All that remains is to hope for another oviposition [deposition of eggs] of our Black Ribbon Morays in the near future.“

October 16, 2013

Zoo Vienna's newest Panda cub, the third Panda ever to be born at the zoo, is now two months old. The little animal is at an exciting phase of development: his eyes have opened.

"Panda babies are born blind. Between 30 and 45 days after birth their eyes slowly begin to open. One to two weeks later they have opened completely although perception is still restricted to light-dark contrasts," the zoo’s director Dagmar Schratter explains.

Photo credits: Daniel Zupanc / Zoo Vienna

See an early video of Yang Yang with her newborn:

Meanwhile, mother Yang Yang is now comfortable leaving the breeding box to eat and drink about seven times a day. All in all, she now leaves the young animal, which already weighs around 6.5 pounds (3 kg), alone for up to six hours. Still, the black and white fur-ball’s admirers will have to be patient another few months until he will be able to climb out of the breeding box on his own.

Schratter says, "The baby panda cannot crawl yet. He manages to push himself away from the floor only to fall over immediately and to tumble back into the soft bamboo nest."

September 09, 2013

At Zoo Vienna, the wait is over: after a lengthy gestation period of 645 days, Tonga the African Elephant brought a baby into the world. The little pachyderm, born on September 4, is a female. She follows her mother's every step with clumsy feet, and nurses about every half hour. Zoo Staff have picked out three names to chose from but haven't decided on the perfect one yet.

This is the second offspring for 28-year-old Tonga, who has lived at the zoo since 1998. Her first calf was born in 2003. Says Zoo Director Dagmar Schratter, "Tonga is the matriarch of our herd and generally a very balanced animal." She is devoted and caring mother, and will be raising for her own baby. For now, Tonga and her calf will live separate from the rest of the herd, to ensure that they will be able to bond and rest together.

Photo credits: Zoo Vienna

For Zoo Vienna, the coordinator of the European studbook for African Elephants, this is the fourth birth. Worldwide, the little elephant is a sensation: she is the first calf conceived through artificial insemination using frozen semen. The father is a wild bull from the Phinda Gamer Reserve in Africa, who was placed under general anesthesia for the collection.

Artificial insemination is now routine in African Elephant breeding - but only with fresh or chilled semen. To transport the sperm of a wild bull of Africa in a European zoo, but it had to be frozen. But the sperm of elephants are extremely sensitive: only two cases using frozen and thawed sperm had resulted in a fertilization, and both pregnancies ended early. The successful new technique was developed by a team from the Berlin Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research.

This new method is a great opportunity: it can be used to help strengthen the genetics of not only elephants, but of other endangered species in captivity as well. This little elephant is a positive result of a successful collaboration between the Vienna Zoo and Berlin Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), the Zooparc de Beauval and the Pittsburgh Zoo.

September 03, 2013

Only a few weeks old and already thousands of quills! On August 4, Zoo Vienna welcomed a baby North American Porcupine. The porcupette is a female and weighed in at just about 1.3 pounds (600 g) at her first medical checkup. The gestation period for porcupines is relatively long, around seven months, so the juveniles are already well-developed at birth. They come into the world with eyes open and can run immediately. At just a few days old, the porcupette had started to practice climbing. Now at one month old, she still drinks milk but also nibbles on carrots, apples, beetroots, and branches. She will be weaned at one and a half months old.

Photo credits: Zoo Vienna

Although North American and European Porcupines might look very similar, they are actually not very closely related. North American Porcupines are the second largest New World rodent, after the North American Beaver. Commonly found from Alaska to Mexico, they are excellent albeit slow climbers and spend most of their lives in trees. These herbivores are crepuscular, meaning that they are mainly active at dawn and dusk. A single North America Porcupine may have up to 30,000 barbed quills for self-defense. At birth, the quills of a porcupette are short and soft, but they harden after a few days.